Let's Hear It for the Old Couple

Thinking about Chaucer in the twenty-first century is for me more than an act of keeping alive within me a respect for a man and his works long, long dead but as well of an awareness that the reading of him revealed itself to me. I speak of the relationship between the teller and the tale, a relationship that can influence the manner in which both teller and tale are recalled long after the reading is done.

I speak admiringly of The Pardoner's Tale, which in its dark, Chaucerian way, snaps me six hundred years away, into episodes of The Wire. The Pardoner's Tale is not for everyone, indeed not for the pilgrims for whom it is intended. When the eponymous narrator begins his prologue at the urging of the host, Harry Bayley, his fellow pilgrims don't want to hear it, because of the ambiguous nature of the man:
A voice he had as small as hath a goat.
No beard had he, nor ever one should have.
As smooth it was as it were new y-shave;
I trow he were a gelding or a mare...

which is to say, his sexuality is certainly called into account and in addition because of his profession of selling religious relics of doubtful provenance and effect. The Pardoner is a fraud in many ways although to his credit, he is forthcoming to a high degree, undercutting our own tendency to regard him with the same disdain shown by his fellow travelers. At first he demonstrates for them the sales pitch he uses on prospective customers, but then, after a moment of reflection, he acknowledges that he has just given forth nothing but cynical insincerity his , further confessing "myn entente is nat but for to wynne,/ And nothynge for correccioun of synne" (My intent is merely to win [make money], and not at all for the correction of sin). Hearing his confession, offered without apology and under no duress, aren't our feelings for him more complex and positive?

Now on to that splendid Wife of Bath. Her prologue, like The Pardoner's, is a partial confession/revelation, partly a defense. Her curriculum vitae includes having had five husbands, which gives her leave to speak of the "wo that is marriage."

A good WIF was ther OF biside BATHE,
But she was somdel deef, and that was scathe.
Of clooth makyng she hadde swich an haunt,
She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt.
In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon
That to the offrynge bifore hire sholde goon;
And if ther dide, certeyn so wrooth was she
That she was out of alle charitee.
Hir coverchiefs ful fyne weren of ground.
I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound
That on a Sonday weren upon hir heed.
Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed,
Ful streite yteyd, and shoes ful moyste and newe.
Boold was hir face, and fair, and reed of hewe.
She was a worthy womman al hir lyve.
Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde fyve,
Withouten oother compaignye in youthe--
But therof nedeth nat to speke as nowthe.

Ah, look at the game old gal, in charge and bigger than life from the very get-go. My personal preference is for the Prologue to her tale, rather than the tale she tells of the court of King Arthur which, although revelatory of a side of her character, seems less exuberant and dimensional than the Prologue. I love it when she rips the equivalent of a girlie magazine from the hands of her present husband and instructs him to admire her--and he does. Or so she says. With all that dynamism and self-assurance she displays, there is just the right touch of ambiguity about her to make us wonder and remember.

These two characters, holding fast to our imaginations over the years represent ways to build characters we can regard as timeless and timelessly human, filled with foible, self-interest, and yet guided by a moral compass where the needle rests not on magnetic north but on the place in the psyche where the truth of self-knowledge dwells.

A Year or Two at the Early Morning Casino Buffets

As with Energy, Story is not continuous; each proceeds in small, discrete particles.

The elementary particles of Energy may travel as waves or particles; in Story, the discrete elementary bits travel as narrative or dialog.

Whether in Energy or Story, the movement of these particles is inherently random. Some writers, critics, literary agents, and publishers may speak of templates, which is to say outlines or formulae, and which opens the door for a full-on discussion about predictability. Okay: in quantum physics, it is pretty nearly impossible to predict the movement of the particles associated with energy. In some types of stories, it is possible to predict when and where a particular event will exhibit an anticipated behavior. Nevertheless, even in such stories, surprise is an important part of particular behavior.

It is physically impossible in quantum mechanics to know the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time, to the point where the more one such element is known the less likely the possibility of obtaining the measurement of the other. In a more idiosyncratic way in story, the more one knows about the position of a character, the less likely the possibility of that character doing something of a surprising nature. And yet.

Characters do change their state and so it becomes a kind of quantum behavior to keep them in action, while observing them, applying among other things Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to them or, if you prefer to use your own name for the concept, applying to your changing characters your own name principle. The characters should change, undergo some kind of transmogrification.

What hubris to limit the appearance of absentmindedness merely to generic professors or to scientists. Writers may be properly distressed after having spent some time trying to chart the direction, the velocity, and the position of a character within the framework of some puzzling equation, only to find that the character already had a mind of its own, wanted no part of its creator.

As some quantum physicists seek for a Unified Theory which, they hope will explain Everything, some writers wish a theory that will minimize the randomness of life and the ongoing attempts of writers and poets to formulate a description that gets us all. It has in fact been apparent for any number of years. Someone wants something or someone. Put that in your cyclotron and turn on the motor. Then add who that person is so that a reader can decide what accommodations ar necessary before it is possible to root for that individual. Now add a certain knowledge of what that character will do to accomplish the previously depicted details.

Watch for surprises.

Plan B

A contingency is an event or behavior that has potential to take place but whose outcome is not certain. Contingency is our pole star. We use the sextants of our hopes and desires to plot our courses among the bright stars of the night, but their light has left its source and has been traveling toward us since before many of us were born. Contingency is what we will do if we get what we want, if we do not get what we want, if we trip over something following an otherwise clear path toward what we want.

Contingency is Plan B, and maybe the thought of it is so abhorrent that we shift gears into denial or worse, acting-out lunacy, just one of the consequences of having achieved everything we've wanted until now, when the fear of not achieving THAT THING becomes so enormous and fearful that we come forth with Plan B, Well if that doesn't work, I can always...

It is usually after a novel or story or poem is completed when the fear emerges that a Plan B might be necessary, but in fact the completion of a novel or poem or short story or even a book review or personal essay or a blog posing represents two bodies moving away from one another at the speed of--well, of light from a distant star. There is the individual who created the work, who has learned something from having done the work. There is the work, with a life of its own. The creator looks at it in the way a parent looks after a child. The work wants to show off. The parent is embarrassed by the inherent vigor and audacity of the work.

Things do not work out the way we intend. From the moment of the idea or what if or inspiration through the execution to that triumphant there!, the work slithers and slides away from us and there is a moment of wanting to get the toothpaste back into the tube, get it out properly this time, then a moment of, ah, what the hell.

Some of the finest rewards of all come when, during other, more structured circumstances, I am looking for something, come across a pad of note paper or even the print-out of a manuscript, pick it up to see what it is, then become pulled in, wondering how many times do I have to remind students to put their names on their papers, then realize the only person I know of who does not do so is me. This that I am reading is mine, but it is as though someone had gone to considerable effort to capture the things I'd write about, then slip it in among my papers, a kind of existential joke.

Great Expectations

Characters enter a scene with expectations.

Readers pick up a book with expectations.

Writers write with expectations stories that have expectations expressed and implied residing within.

Without expectation, there can be no story.

Peoples once referred to as Hunters and Gatherers, now regarded as Foragers, position themselves in strategic places, anticipating the arrival of a herd of some sort or other, or possibly one huge woolly mammoth.

Humans evolved to have expectations. The sophistication of a particular culture or society may be measured by the complexity (or naivete) of expectations.

Expectation is the dramatic equivalent of tinder, which is useful to light a fire under the crucible of story, piling on more expectation until the crucible boils over.

Another high-burning dramatic tinder is misunderstanding. Throw some misunderstanding on the fire, then step back. Characters do not like to be misunderstood they like to think they are making themselves perfectly clear. When readers begin to discern that characters, wanting to be understood--Am I making myself clear?--are in fact muddying the waters, making in fact cowboy coffee of the waters, they begin to have expectations.

The expectations are that there will be conflict.

All you have to do now is make the conflict interesting.

Readers have expectations that conflict will be interesting.

In real life, conflict, even conflict based on misunderstanding, is often boring. Think of how many persons who disagree with you seem boring.

In real life, when you were an editor on the rise, an author announced himself to the receptionist as having a manuscript you would surely want to publish. When you learned his name, you understood that this was no idle boast here was an author with some name recognition, hoping to get an out-of-print title back into print. He had reasonable expectations that you would want to publish this book, giving it new life and no doubt giving him a few months worth of trouble-free living where rent was concerned. The moment you heard the man's name, you had expectations of what the title would be. You also had every expectation that you would not want to publish this book.

Some remarkable things happened in the lobby of that publishing company, which is no longer a publishing company and may well be seeing better days as a purveyor of automobile parts. Yet another adventure was enacted in that lobby when a psychiatrist questioned your sanity because you did not want to publish a book he assured you--correctly--that his book would sell a million copies in hardcover. Your answer for each author was the same. "It is a question of taste. I don't want to publish that book."

The author of the first book was Lajos Egri; the title of his book was and still is The Art of Dramatic Writing. The author of the second book was Arthur Janov, Ph.D.. His book was and is The Primal Scream.

This leads us to one kind of ending, the kind informed by another important element in human behavior and thus in dramatic behavior. The element is consequences. The consequences of my not contracting either book are multifarious, may lead you to have any of a number of opinions of me, for instance. Henceforth, years after the fact, you may well come to think of me as the man who could have published The Art of Dramatic Writing and The Primal Scream, but didn't. The consequences also involved the direction publishing either book would have on my employer.

Expectation. Misunderstanding. Consequences. What more could a narrative ask?

Getting the Swing of It

Hypotheses: Nothing is what it seems. Everything is other than it seems. Something is a surprise, waiting to perform chiropractic on a mood or condition. Something is a disaster, waiting to distribute overdrawn notices on one's reality account. Disaster protection is available at 17.5 percent interest. Events are pinatas hanging from convenient trees, daring us to swing at them with ambition or irritation or celebratory enthusiasm. The LAPD has made pinatas of many individuals who were actually celebrating but were seen by the LAPD as activists.

The study of Beckett begins to pay off richly when one entertains the subtext of nothing being what it seems. Failure for Beckett was the opportunity to try again. I don't know that he thought at all about the implications of success and so I can only hypothesize that success fin writing or him wasn't what it seemed, or perhaps worse, success in writing meant he did not have to revisit a particular place again because he couldn't

The danger of nothing being what it seems is the potential for a constant feeling of betrayal. Betrayal means one's trust is undercut (once again) which means one begins to resent being so vulnerable, which means one resolves not to trust anything, which strikes me as an invitation not to trust myself (any of them) which reminds me of earlier times when I claimed to do just that, which is to say I agreed not to trust myself. This meant a time of not knowing if I were hungry or horny or inspired or sleepy or if I understood Chaucer. There are some risks worth taking. One risk not worth taking is the conviction that I do not and cannot understand Chaucer.

That's okay because risk is not what it seems either. Risk seems so fraught with dangerous consequences that it can be interpreted as a reason to do nothing except maybe grouse and take pot shots at persons and institutions, leaving one vulnerable to all the consequences of not doing anything, a course of action that is more dangerous than it seems.

If something is what it seems, there is no surprise, not much chance of other. Does the risk of something being what it seems outweigh the risk of nothing being what it seems?

One of the few constants here is love, which is never what it seems, is filled with risks, surprises, consequences, vulnerability. Love is like Excalibur, the sword thrust deep into the stone, waiting for someone--Arthur--to pull it forth. Grab it by the hilt and yank in a quick, steady movement. That's love, not Excalibur; that was already yanked.

Look for pinatas.

Swing.

Swing again, only this time, swing better.

Diagramming Sentences

Many of my generation are able to recall with varying degrees of fondness the ordeal of being called upon in class, bidden to confront the blackboard, then diagram sentences that ran from straightforward declarative to the more complex and orotund, enhanced perhaps by dependent and independent clauses.

At the time my only hesitation resided in the knowledge that my handwriting was a mass or competing styles and desires. I actually enjoyed diagramming sentences, approached the task with the same confidence I applied to being a smart ass. I knew such arcana as predicate nominative, condition contrary to fact, adverbial clause. Diagramming sentences was something I was good at; it felt good to be accomplished at something.

I am not a grammarian. I can repeat from memory the definitions of parts of speech, but this does not make me any more a grammarian than repeating a mantra makes a Buddhist or Hindu a Buddhist or Hindu; definitions are merely steps along the way. Even though I catch myself in my sentences sounding formal, I can often find a way in revision to cope with formality. Word choice. Timing. Length of sentence.

Putting sentences together is like setting up a model train, deciding where the layout goes, what degree of risk taking scratches like a cat wanting in or out, what the intent of the sentences is.

Sometimes, as a reviewer/critic, or as a teacher, I try to discover the intent of the writer--and count myself a dismal failure, thinking at times that it's best to slink off somewhere, a park, the beach, a coffee house, and read for the sheer pleasure of it in much the same manner as listening to music. Listening to music, I don't have to spend time discovering how I am led to feel. I already know. Then comes the question, as easily asked when I read through my own work as when I respond in a workshop or take an assignment from a literary agent or publisher: How does this make you feel? As with olives, cashew nuts, and grapes, you can't stop with one; so too with questions. Is what reading this text makes you feel congruent with the author's intent? (In the case of your own work, the question becomes Is this what you meant? )

The purpose of all the reading you need in order to access your own writing and to bring forth useful commentary in the class room or the editorial conference is to hone your senses to the inner music, the layout of the sentences. To return to an earlier metaphor: Is the caboose where it ought to be?

Timing. Design. Intent. Inner music.

Be There or Be Squashed

Through the happy discovery of several YouTube performances of a favored pianist, Sviatasov Richter, rendering a number of works by a favored composer, Maurice Ravel, I was able to move through the thrill of the music itself, arriving at a useful, informative conclusion. Richter had an enormous repertoire, spanning a chronological gamut from Bach to such moderns as Gershwin, Berg, and Stravinsky. He was particularly fond of Debussy, performed Ravel with the insightful grace of a big man, a powerful performer, executing the lush sophisticated lyricism of Ravel.

Watching these Youtube videos impressed on me the little I knew of Richter, particularly his desire to render the work of the composer as the composer saw it, neither adding to it nor removing from it, neither embellishing nor diminishing what was there. Richter was, accordingly, like an actor, wanting to get at the essence of the text. Text meant a great deal to him to the point where, watching him, listening to him, I felt the connection between Richter and the music that the actor has with the text, that the writer has with the narrative, that the reader has with the narrative.

Into this equation comes the similarity between what the composer of music and narrative do, the play between the word and the note, the relationship each has to time. The word has verb tense, the note has duration. The actor needs to understand the consequences of time and timing, how to draw out, truncate, pause.

Particularly watching and listening to Richter perform Ravel's Alborado del Gracioso, Noble and Sentimental Waltzes, and The Waltz, all three of which are great favorites of mine, it was easy to picture him becoming the piece, the player transformed to the music, the actor losing self wile infusing energy into the text, the writer, during composition, becoming the story. So many stories don't work because there is little or no trace of the writer in them. Stories that do work seem somehow iconic or epic configurations, given reverberation through the writer's eye for physical and emotional details.

A writer's inventiveness is secondary to the voice and intent of the writer in concocting the narrative. What does the writer wish to demonstrate? What evocative details does the writer set up, almost as wind chimes are set up to be nudged into contact with one another by the breeze of the writer's invention?

Can you put yourself into this equation? It surely is an equation as opposed to a formula. The Imp of Perversity whispers into my ear that the more time the writer spends inside the story from the get go, the less time the writer will need to spend maneuvering the snow plow of revision down the pathway.